First you have to lose your memory, if only little by little, to realize that memory defines our life. Life without memory is no life. Memory connects, defines our reason, our sensitivity, even our actions.
Without memory we’re less than nothing. I can only wait then for total amnesia, the only possibility to wipe out an entire life, such as happened to my mother
(Luis Bunuel)
Childish again, for ever a child. Inaccurate and only in a rough way those terms appoint the link between demented and mentally disabled people.
Starting from various encounters with Alzheimer patients, the Stap actors improvised with memories and more specifically forgetting, losing memories.
They confront the spectators with the fear, the panic, the confusion, the impotence, the decay. Till only a ruin lasts, full of holes and cracks through which all concepts, feeling and actions are swept up. Until even that last small dust heap disappears.
… with dementia, however severe the organic damage, there still remains undiminished the possibility of reintegration through art, through community, through thought. These possibilities still continue to exist, even when the neurological destruction of the human mind seems at first hopeless
(Oliver Sacks)
This is a subject that imposed itself upon us from the very nature of the Stap actors. And this same nature ensures that it will still be a sparkling performance, full of life, with a lot of dancing and movement.
Where the smallest imaginable act takes place with an overwhelming intensity. Through which beauty and consolation achieve their central position.
timeline
Brilleman had its first night the 6th of September 2012 in our own theatre and was staged 10 more times that year in Flanders. September the 21st Brilleman was staged at the Festival Grenzelos Kultur (vol 14) in Mainz (Germany). Brilleman was recaptured in 2013 and 2014, enjoying 16 performances in Flanders and was furthermore guest at the Open Ohr Festival in Mainz, ijn Graz (Austria) and Schwäbisch Hall (Germany).
credits
Direction: Marc Bryssinck
Choreografie : Joke Laureyns
Scenography and lights: Steven Brys
Costumes: Mieja Hollevoet
Cast:
Liesbeth De Hertogh
Ann Dockx
Peter Janssens
Pieter Lavrijssen
Katrien Lingier
Annelies Mertens
Jelle Palmaerts
Nancy Schellekens
Leen Teunkens
Jason Van Laere
Peter Van Lommel
Marc Wagemans
press
Stilled (mental) movements
Theatermaggezien
2012
The associative slow movements hush, freeze and glide over in a new image of a new movement, in the same way the brain works slower and less complete.
The faces fade, disappear under the layer of clay. In the same way images, impressions, memories fade. From clay to clay. With a bit of luck a small bust remains for later times, that’s all.
Brilleman is characterized by a strange and intriguingly beautiful repetitive minimalism in moving and stilled images. Which we are used to and always like to see, coming from Theater Stap.